


Serenade

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/M, Sadstuck, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-07
Updated: 2012-03-07
Packaged: 2017-11-01 14:33:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/357908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She loves him as much as she is capable of loving.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Serenade

Her life is ending. Nepeta knows it as well as she knows how to hunt or to play, to breathe or to blink. She is dying, and as her blood pools around her head and her limbs steadily grow numb...

... She thinks about the things she wishes she could have done.

She wishes for so many things. Regret hurts more than the swelling and the bruising. It is a sharp taste, something she feels very distinctly among the numbness and swimming of her consciousness. She thinks of _him_ , and she thinks of her love for him. Fondly, she thinks of his insults and the way he would be nice to her. How he doesn't put up with people he doesn't like, and how he was careful to never actually hurt her. He liked her, not in the same way she likes him... but he liked her. And that had been enough for Nepeta.

Regret is an awful thing.

She regrets being satisfied. She regrets being happy with something as small as that. She regrets not telling him. As her body takes blood away from her extremities to extend and stretch and push away the inevitable, Nepeta regrets. She can't sob, that requires more than she has now, but she can cry. So she cries. She cries with the very last of her life's fading energy, and she thinks about him.

As she dies, she imagines what it might have been like to kiss him; to hold his hand. She imagines being held by him, warm and safe, these things scattered among the regret and the sadness and the fear. _I don't want to die_ she thinks, and Karkat's hands clasp tight around her wrist. _I don't want you to die either._ He looks at her and he cries grey tears, regret sharp in his mouth and his mind.

"I love you," she tells him, voice a hoarse whisper.

_I love you too._

Nepeta smiles in a room all alone.


End file.
